quote:Dan Uggla is a better baserunner than he's given credit for. He is always hustling. If he is hitting leadoff he's not going to clog the bases and he's going to get more fastballs than he will hitting 7th. Why? Because pitchers will not want to risk walking him to set the stage for Heyward, Justin, Freeman and BJ. That's just screaming big inning. If he gets more fastballs to hit his contact rate will increase. Why? As Bobby Cox once said "throw a guy enough fastballs and they'll time a jet". In other words if you see the same pitch enough times you'll eventually hit it. One of the reasons he saw hardly any fastballs once he got moved down in the order was because pitchers didn't care if they walked him because they didn't fear the 8th spot or the pitcher's spot. So in those very rare times that he did get a fastball he would often times completely swing through it because he his swing was completely screwed up because he saw so few of them. You can hit in the cage until you're blue in the face but it's not the same as stepping in the box against a real pitcher throwing 95

Completely agree. We should at least TRY Uggla at the top.

I'm pretty fearful of throwing Simmons in there. He did well enough last year, but hitting atop the order is tough. Worried it may be too much too fast for him.

They actually didn't give up that much in the Upton trade, but they've drafted so poorly the past few years that it's really hurt the system. The 2010 draft probably won't produce much of anything besides Andrelton Simmons (no longer eligible for the list), 2011 looks just slightly better right now and 2009 is likely to end up producing Mike Minor and nothing else. They're not lower because they've made good trades and found value in non-traditional ways, but you can't get this little value from the draft for long without feeling it.